Abstract

Robotics research still struggles with reproducibility. The ROS ecosystem enables reuse of software, but not hardware. Researchers waste time porting systems between hardware platforms to reproduce research between labs. Researchers in developing counties in particular often cannot afford the proprietary robots used by others. If a published robotics system is dependent on any component that is only available from a single supplier, then all work building on it is at risk if that supplier vanishes, de-lists or changes the product. Open Source Hardware (OSH, \cite{pearce2012building}) is hardware whose designs and build instructions are public, easy, and low-cost so that anyone is free to build and modify them, enabling large community collaborations. Combined open software and hardware stacks allow any researcher to download, build, exactly replicate, then extend the published work which they read about.